Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane’s most popular vehicles named

A new electric vehicle uptake report has revealed the most popular vehicles in and around the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane metropolitan areas, with the Holden Commodore being named as the most-registered vehicle across the three major centres.

The report in question – KPMG’s ‘Accelerating local electric vehicle uptake where it matters’ – used data sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to create a colour-coded map of each city’s postcodes and the most-registered vehicles of 2021.

While the Commodore was named as the overall favourite, it was pushed all the way by the Toyota Corolla, Toyota LandCruiser and Mazda3, the former two of which dominated the Sydney and Brisbane areas.

For ease of reading and viewing, we’ve given each city its own sub-heading and posted the relevant popularity map as well as the corresponding average vehicle map.

Gone from showrooms but clearly not from the hearts of Victorian motorists, the Holden Commodore was the vehicle of choice for Melbournians last year, especially in the outer suburbs where it rubbed shoulders with the Toyota LandCruiser.

By contrast, the inner suburbs were dominated by the Toyota Corolla while the CBD and immediate surrounds belonged to the Volkswagen Golf.

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to find Melbourne’s inner suburbs had the greatest number of newer vehicles, specifically aged between 3.5 and seven years old.

The average vehicle age progressively gets older the further afield you go, something KPMG attributed to the fewer “major employment centres”, with the bulk of the city’s postcodes driving vehicles aged between 10 and 13.5 years old.

As mentioned above, the Toyota Corolla was easily the most favoured vehicle in the Greater Sydney area but, as with Melbourne, the most common model within the CBD and surrounding areas was the Volkswagen Golf.

Expand the analysis area a bit wider and you’ll notice the Holden Commodore and Toyota LandCruiser once again rise to prevalence along with a few pockets of popularity for the Mazda3.

Compared to Melbourne, a much higher number of postcodes favoured newer vehicles, however, the overall trend is largely the same in that the further afield you go, the higher the average vehicle age becomes.

The Toyota Corolla’s inner-city dominance continued up in Brisbane too, so much so that in conjunction with the mazda3, the Golf can’t lay claim to owning even one local government area.

Move away from the inner suburbs though and you’ll quickly see an almost overwhelming preference for the Toyota LandCruiser and a few key Commodore regions.

Compared to the other two cities, Brisbane easily has the biggest share per capita of vehicles 10 years or older, and the same goes for vehicles older than 13, with only the most central postcodes and a couple of outliers favouring younger vehicles under seven.

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